Elizabeth Hawes quotes:

If you are the type who truly longs to be a Southern Belle at all times, regardless of taking twice the space available in bus, subway or elsewhere, you had best remove yourself to a large estate replete with servants.

It was my idea that if you started any kind of business, you should begin somewhere near where you hoped to end. In other words, if I wanted to make really good clothes to order, I would start out making good, and therefore expensive, clothes to order. If I started making inexpensive clothes, I thought probably I'd die making them.

Women want to wear what they do because of what goes on in their heads. Their size and shape have practically nothing to do with it.

Style doesn't change every month or every year. It only changes as often as there is a real change in the point of view and lives of the people for whom it is produced.

Chic is a combination of style and fashion.

If you feel like getting a divorce, you are no exception to the general rule.

being chic not only takes a great deal of money but an enormous amount of time. It practically precludes everything else, even being on charity committees. Half of one's time goes getting chic, the other half being seen that way.

The process of education is not generally a process of teaching people to think and ask questions. It ... is mostly one of teaching the young what is and getting them into a mood where they will go on keeping it that way.

Fashion is that horrid little man with an evil eye who tells you that your last winter's coat may be in perfect physical condition, but you can't wear it. You can't wear it because it has a belt and this year 'we are not showing belts.

It is impossible to be completely abstract about clothes because they have no life unless they are worn. They must fit onto a body or they do not exist.

No garment which distorts the shape and motion of the wearer is beautiful, nor s any garment beautiful which emphasizes more than one or at most two of your sexual characteristics.

There is no word in English for chic. Why should there be? Everything chic is by legend French. Perhaps everything chic is in reality French.

One of the most fascinating things about the world of fashion is that practically no one knows who inhabits it or why it exists. There are a few people who know how it works, but they won't tell.

After marriage, all things change. And one of them better be you.

rule number one for all American women: You are to be seen and felt, but not heard. Listen and do as you are told and everything will be all right.

Is woman a lost sex? If so, is she the only lost sex? Has woman alone conceived all the vipers in our land?

I don't know when the word fashion came into being, but it was an evil day. For thousands of years people got along with something called style and maybe, in another thousand, we'll go back to it.

All one really requires for putting anything over is enough energy and resistance to keep on plugging the idea. Someone will eventually fall.

There is a sound reason why one and a half billion dollars are spent for cosmetics in your country every year, and only half that sum for education: There are no naturally pretty girls in the United States.

If one is willing to have children, rhythm is probably the best method of contraception.

Yesterday people were permitted to change things. They will be permitted to advocate changing them tomorrow. It is only dangerous to think of changing anything today.

all changes in clothes rise out of the lives of the people who wear them. The function of the designer is simply to see a little ahead of time what the people want, and to provide it. No designer can start anything really new and different unless there is a public all ready for it ...

The French legend is a very simple one. All really beautiful clothes are designed in the houses of the French couturiers and all women want those clothes.

You are being trained to be a Queen, but you do not have to act like one until y ou get your own hive. Being a Queen will not overtax you as you will never be called upon to use your mind on any major matter. You will use the National Mind, their mind. It's very restful ...